Reason number one was Conrad Schmitt. He'd declined Gwen's and my "invitation" for an executive session before the party, claiming he was too busy but he'd meet with us the week after.
Reason number two: I'll give you one guess who else Schmitt invited. I don't mean Grant. Him I knew about. Not that he wasn't a pain in the ass, too, hovering near me annoyingly, but that was minor in comparison.
Yes, you guessed it. Who strutted in wearing a touchable-looking black silk shirt and leather pants that looked painted on? Axel Hawke greeted me with a floor-scraping bow and a pillow-soft kiss on the backs of my knuckles. I could barely breathe. So much for forgetting him.
I pretended it didn't affect me. "Welcome to The Governor's Club," I said, as if we'd just met. "Would you like an orientation tour?"
"I most certainly would," Axel said.
"Great. Grant was just about to go through with Madison, weren't you, Grant?"
"Uh?" Grant grimaced, looking confused, as well he should since I was totally making up the bit about the tour.
Thank goodness Madison was a sharp cookie, though. She didn't miss a beat when I said, "Maddie, could you show the gentlemen here the ropes?"
"And the chains," she joked smoothly. "Right this way."
She gestured and Grant followed in her wake.
Axel, though, didn't. He didn't take the hint and stood there at the edge of my personal space, like a small sun emanating heat right through me. He made small talk. "So, how've you been since the awards?"
I struggled to tamp down a rising maelstrom inside me that was a lot of lust, but mixed with a little anger and fear. Hadn't I figured it all out with Sakura's help? I'd thought I had a handle on this thing. Apparently not. I went into full ice queen mode and gave the curtest answer I could. "Fine."
He folded his hands like a choirboy, but looked far from innocent. "Will Sakura be here tonight? It would be nice to see a friendly face."
That was his way of telling me I wasn't being friendly. It's true: I wasn't. But just because a guy has fucked you six ways from Sunday doesn't mean you owe him the time of day. Even if looking at him makes you feel like you're melting inside. "She had another engagement for tonight, I'm sorry," I said, trying to adopt a kind of flight attendant voice-faux-compassionate and dismissive at the same time.
He gave up. I had won that battle. "I better catch up with my tour guide, eh?" he said with a cocked eyebrow.
"Yes. Please." I gestured toward the hall.
"All right then." It didn't look like a retreat as he sauntered in the direction Madison and Grant had gone, but I counted it as one. I savored my victory by watching him walk away. His ass cheeks moved independently of each other under the supple leather. Wow. I needed to sit down.
I put myself onto a bar stool in the main social room and tried to catch my breath. Well, I had been right when I told Sakura that being in the same room with him would be a disaster for having a rational conversation. I'd barely been able to put a whole sentence together, as if that electric tingling I felt on my skin when I was near him was actually causing my brain to short-circuit.
I tried to reason with myself. Of course he makes you weak in the knees-he makes millions of women and girls feel like that every day. That's his job. Okay, but then why was I sort of angry with him, too? Was it just that I was afraid and being angry was my only defense? That's it, I thought. You're afraid of how he took all your resistance and fear away. You're afraid you won't be able to protect yourself.
I stayed there in the main social room, the large central one with the Catherine Wheel and the bar. Gwen contentedly glided through the halls but I really didn't feel comfortable seeing Kresley Palmer spank his wife, even if they were okay with being seen. Gwen had explained that people would shut the door to their playroom if they didn't want spectators, and they'd leave it open if they did. I still didn't feel brave enough to catch a glimpse. I was a little surprised that everyone seemed so … normal. The guests were cheerful and chatty, just like at any other party. I had been expecting more sultry eyelash batting and swooning. No, I was the only one who'd felt like swooning, I guess.
Staying in the main room, though, meant that eventually a scene came to me. The other dungeon hostess on our staff was a dark-skinned, dark-eyed woman named Chita. She was short, fierce, and plump, and I noticed her talking with Grant in front of the wheel.
"Your first time?" she said, loud enough to be heard throughout the room, where a few couples were socializing. "Well, then. The best way to learn it is to get up there yourself for a bit. How about this. I'll flog you first, and then once you've got the idea, we'll switch. Deal?"
"Um, deal," he said, slipping his blazer from his shoulders.
I walked back to the main door while he got undressed, as if I might need to check on something, but Reeve looked bored at his post. When I returned to the main room Grant was down to black boxer briefs and black socks. Why he kept his socks on, I don't know, but he was climbing onto the footrests on the wheel and Chita was strapping him in. She had a flogger with a handle about a foot long with a full head of heavy leather tresses hanging over one shoulder.
Grant looked back at her, tugging at one wrist cuff a little. "The big one? You're going to use the big one?"
Chita patted him on the backside. "No worries, pup. The big one's the easy one! It's the little ones that sting like a motherfucker. Here you go, nice and easy."
She stepped back and swung it slowly toward him and the leather tails slapped his back, barely making a sound. They both chuckled, Grant in nervous relief.
"That hardly feels like anything," he said.
"I know, right? See, nothing to worry about." She swung a little faster the next time, draping the tails down his back. He wriggled a little. "Think of it like an exotic back massage."
In fact, Grant sounded a lot like some people do when they're getting worked over at a spa, everything from sighs and groans to the occasional excited yelp. Chita gradually increased how fast and how hard she was hitting his back, until the rhythm became hypnotic. She looked so focused, so competent. I stopped feeling nervous about watching and instead found myself wondering what it felt like.
The thing is, I was sure that it would feel completely different to get that "exotic back massage" from one of the hostesses as a lark than it would to stand up there, half-naked, in front of Axel.
At last Chita stepped back and wiped her brow. "I'm working up a sweat over here. You ready to switch places, Grant?"
"Sure."
Before she let him go, though, she ran her fingernails up and down the pink skin of his back and shoulders and he shivered and made a ridiculous, delighted sound. I held in a tense laugh, not wanting Grant to think I was laughing at him. Even if I was. Especially because I was.
They had to adjust the placement of the footrests and the wrist restraints because Chita was so much shorter than he was, and she gave him a few pointers on how to swing the flogger before she shucked the leather bustier she'd been buckled into. "You should probably start on my back," she purred, "but if you do it nice, I'll let you flog these next." She cupped her voluminous breasts in her hands.
I felt a shiver run through me at the thought. I'd have said it was a shiver of revulsion except the feeling that coiled in my gut was nothing like disgust: it was hunger. I wanted to be touched. I needed to be touched. I lived every day in a world where I had to fend off the inappropriate advances of men on one side and make myself seem like "one of the guys" in the boardroom so they'd listen to me, where I had to guard my reputation as tirelessly as my ideas. And I was tired of it.
That's why Grandpa Cy started the club, I realized. Because everyone deserved a place where they could let that guard down and let their true selves-their erotic selves-be free.
But while the club could be that for everyone else, it couldn't be that for me. Grant was a quick study, easily getting the hang of swinging the flogger, and egged on by her gusto. "Come on, baby, that's it!" Chita exclaimed as he did as she had done, making the strokes harder and faster as he went. "Woo! Harder!"
He switched from one hand to the other as I guess his arm got tired, and then when she was still shouting, "Yeah! Yeah! More!" he went to swinging the flail with both hands, like a lumberjack with an ax. Wow. The harder he hit her, the louder and happier Chita's whoops got. The noise had attracted a crowd and she got them involved next. "That's it, babe, that's it! Okay now, ten more, y'all count down with me! Ten! Nine!"
It turned into something like a scene from a New Year's Eve party, with everyone counting down to zero in unison. Grant whacked her as hard as he could on each count and, when they got to zero, he practically collapsed against her back and she tipped her head back for a kiss.
I bit my lip. Desire was raging through me now like I'd never felt before. Why did that make me so hot? I guess knowing that flogging was a thing people did had never affected me that much, but seeing it done right in front of me was a lot more affecting.